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The Distortion: 2000 Years of Misrepresenting the Relationship Between Jesus the Messiah and the Jewish People
Dr. John Fischer & Dr. Patrice Fischer
Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2004
ISBN: 1880226251
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Two thousand years of distortion - Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ being a recent example - has produced a litany of tragedies and travesties between Synagogue and Church. The Fischers (husband & wife) wrote this book to encourage a healthier understanding of the Gospel accounts regarding Jesus and the Jewish people. It is an ambitious goal for a 113 page work, but the authors have succeeded in writing a provocative, challenging book - one deserving careful reading by both Christian and the Jewish communities.

Tackling the charge that the Newer Testament (the authors’ preferred designation) is the product of second century writers tailoring a text to fit their own agendas, the Fischers convincingly demonstrate that the gospel accounts are “primary historical sources containing eyewitness testimony.”

Having established its authenticity, the Fischers dismantle the charage that the New Testament is anti-Semitic. Here readers will find insightful discussions on how the biblical text has been manipulated by anti-Semites (including many Christians) throughout history and continuing into the present day. They also address the manner in which non-believing Jews have misread the text in order to bolster their claim of an anti-Jewish spirit in the Newer Testament. Some evangelicals will bristle at the charge that anti-Semitism has emanated from the Christian church, and yet, an objective assessment of the evidence presented inevitably compels one to admit that the history of Christian attitudes toward Jews is less than stellar.

The heart of the book explores Gibson’s movie, contending that this latest cinematic version of the traditional passion plays has the potential to encourage new waves of anti-Semitic attitudes and actions. The Fischers provide a useful survey of how one’s worldview - and the respective worldviews of Jews and Christians are markedly different - governs his or her understanding of the message presented in The Passion. Jews and Christians, sitting side-by-side in the theatre, see two different movies.

This book is bound to raise more than a few eyebrows within the evangelical community. In their desire to properly correct misconceptions about the role of the Jewish people in the death of Jesus, the Fischers seem, and least in my opinion, to go too far. For example, I believe their reading of John 1:11, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (NIV), minimizes the national rejection of Jesus that brought about the still-continuing spiritual hardening Paul speaks of in Romans 11:25.

That said, we must never forget, as the Fischers rightly remind us, that the earliest believers in Yeshua (Jesus) were almost exclusively Jewish. It was only when the gospel began to spread from Jerusalem that gentiles eventually outnumbered Jews within the church.

Despite millennia of harassment and abuse, there is a vibrant worldwide Jewish community - not to menton the modern miracle of Israel. That God’s ancient covenant people still walk the earth is testimony to the veracity of God’s faithfulness to his own Word.

If the worldwide Jewish community is not well understood, the Jewish believing community faces greater misunderstanding. In their desire to follow Jesus as faithful Jews, Messianic Jews (those believing in Jesus while maintaining a Jewish lifestyle) often feel alone - held at arm’s length by evangelicals who fear a mixing of law and grace, and rejected outright as traitors by the Jewish community at large.

The Distortion deserves a wide readership, and can only help narrow the gap of misunderstanding that has existed for too long between many Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus.